Aus deutschen Herzen kam dies schwuele Kreischen?
Und deutschen Leibs ist dies Sich-selbst-Entfleischen?
Deutsch ist dieses Priester-Haendespreizen,
Dies weihrauch-dueftelnde Sinne-Reizen?
Und deutsch dies Stocken, Stuerzen, Taumeln,
Dies ungewisse Bibambaumeln?
Dies Nonnen-Aeugeln, Ave-Glocken-Bimmeln,
Dies ganze falsch verzueckte Himmel-Ueberhimmeln?
- Ist das noch deutsch? -
Erwaegt! Noch steht Ihr an der Pforte: -
Denn, was ihr hort, ist Rom -, Rom's Glaube ohne Worte!
From a German heart came these sultry screeches?
From a German body this self-flagellation?
German, this priestly affection,
This incense smelling sense seduction?
German this faltering, plummeting, staggering,
This woolly ding-dong dangling?
This nunnish ogling, Ave bell-dinging,
This totally falsely enraptured heaven-over-heavening?
- Is that still German? -
Consider this! Stay thee by thy portal -
Then what thou heareth, is Rome - Rome's Faith except in word!
Friedrich Nietzsche's response to Wagner's Parsifal from 'Nietzsche
Contra Wagner' (my own translation, partly based on Walter Kaufmann)
Walter Meyer reports to us on a lecture by Santacroce on Parsifal:
>Santacroce describes Schopenhauer's teachings as full of pessimism,
>convinced of life's futility and non-existence being the preferred state
>over life, best approximated through the Indian concept of Nirvana, but
>that Wagner, as a Christian, had rejected this attitude, affirming instead
>his belief in a personal God and in redemption through Jesus. What
>Schopenhauer influence may have pervaded *Tristan* and *The Ring* ends w/
>the first note of *Parsifal*, which Santacroce considers a Christian
>"mystery play".
It is very true that Wagner took up interest in Christianity late in
in life but in fact it was Schopenhauer's conditional sympathy with
Christianity that lead Wagner to his identification with the Christian
mysteries. Nietzsche was horrified in that he saw in this a betrayal from
the man who had once cast his torch into the seat of the gods, before going
on to declare himself the Death of God. However his interpretation of
Christianity remained to the end entirely Schopenhauerian. Schopenhauer
wrote in 'The World as Will and Representation':
The innermost kernel and spirit of Christianity is the same as that
of Brahmanism and Buddhism: together they teach the heavy guilt of
the human race through existence itself...
Wagner wrote on the 11th of June 1878:
this God, who lives within us [is] the 'inborn antidote' against the
Will
Whereas Nietszche had long since damned Parsifal as 'Rome's faith except
in word' in fact Cosima, a devout Catholic, much distressed by Richard's
Schopenhauerian interpretation of Christianity, wrote on the 19th of
September 1882 that "the repeated concern with Buddha halves his
understanding of Christianity". This Schopenhauerian unification of
Christian-Brahmanistic-Buddhistic thought is what really runs through
Parsifal. That is why Parsifal's moment of metaphysical enlightenment into
the essence of all things is seen by him as a the moment of profoundest
grief:
O wehe des hoechsten Schmerzentags
Da sollte, waehn' ich, was da blueht,
was atmet, lebt und wieder lebt
nur trauern, ach! und weinen!
O alas for that day of the most intense of pain!
Now, I feel, should all that blooms,
that breaths, lives and lives anew
only mourn and weep!
(From the Good Friday Scene Act III)
Notice the allusion to the Buddhistic notion of reincarnation in the words
'was atmet, lebt und wieder lebt'. Schopenhauer argued that the Buddhistic
idea of reincarnation did not mean 'don't worry about death - you can
always come back as a cockroach' as is commonly thought. In Buddhist
thought it is only possible to come back as a higher being so that a
Murderer might come back as judge but still it was the curse of the sins
of a former lifetime that necessitated reincarnation. Thus to have been
reborn was a curse. To have been born at all was the original sin.
Schopenhauer pointed out that Nirvana meant freedom from the curse of being
and reincarnation. That is why it is a curse that Kundry is not allowed to
die. In contrast to Christian thought Eternal Life here is presented as a
curse. It is a curse from which Kundry craves to be redeemed. Of course
for Schopenhauer sexuality - just like reincarnation - perpetuated life
after the death of the individual. Sexuality is also the power with which
Kundry is accursed as men fall helplessly prey to the overwhelming erotic
power of her seduction, only to further perpetuate the curse of her
existence.
A further consequence of this path of thought was Wagner's adoption
of vegetarianism and his opposition to animal experimentation. Through
Schopenhauer he had adopted the Buddhist ideal of absolute non-violence
against all living creatures, condemned as a brutal eruption of the Blind
Will. Wagner wrote in an essay against vivisection:
That we do not dare to take this single self determining motive of
irrefutable pity to the point of all our strivings and teachings,
therein lies the curse of our civilisation, and the documentation of
the becoming ungodly of our state religions, ... against which the
religion of pity may win us a strong ground for a new cultivation in
defiance of the confessors of the utility-dogma.
Of course Wagner's Parsifal is the fool enlightened through pity. Not only
that but this attack on vivisection casts new light on the episode in which
Parsifal foolishly kills a swan. Of course, like the conservative Catholic
(and viciously anti-Semitic) Cosima, those inclined will prefer their own
narrower perspectives on the work, including the wishful thinking that he
had renounced Schopenhauerian thought to become a simple good Christian.
More interestingly perhaps, notice in particular Wagner's use of the term
'the religion of pity' in the quotation. That really does help underline
the fact that ultimate salvation in Parsifal comes, not through divine
intervention, but rather through the humanistic act of compassion.
>Kundry is described by Santacroce as the only creature Klingsor cannot
>control. She had mocked Jesus on His way to His crucifixion and is doomed
>to wander the earth evermore, or something like that, but she isn't the
>wandering Jew(ess). Why not? Well first, because the Jews weren't there
>at the time; they were home enjoying their Seders. The only people outside
>to mock Jesus, were pagans. But, possibly more important, according to
>Santacroce, Wagner finds her capable of salvation, which Jews, racially
>are.
I have already previously criticised at length all attempts to naively
attempt to interpret all of Wagner's villains as being a priori Jewish.
Also if all wanderers were Jewish, Wotan would be Jewish too. In addition
to the fact that Wagner tried to convert the Jewish conductor Hermann Levi
- chosen to premier Parsifal - to Christianity, Wagner also wrote late in
his life in 1881 in "Heldentum und Christentum" ("Heroism and
Christianity") that:
the possible unity of all through intermixing with all races becoming
similar... through that alone is it conceivable that grounded on the
winning of a general moral consensus, we must think of ourselves as
called to practice the true Christianity.
This ideal of a racially unified humanity is in fact a viewpoint which
differs in fact not one iota from 'Das Judentum in der Musik'. It is not
about 'racial cleansing' or any such atrocity but an affirmation of the
unity of humanity (I refer the reader to my other essay on Schoenberg and
Wagner for more details on this). Salvation in Wagner is something
promised to all humanity, regardless of race.
Ultimately a Christian view of Parsifal really tells only part of the
story. Cosima raises something of vital importance when she complains that
Richard's interest in Buddhism halves his understanding of Christianity.
It also means that a naively Christian view tells only half the story when
it comes to understanding Parsifal.
Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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